If they pulled out of the CDMA carriers in the US (which all combined are a majority in the total cellphone lines and amount of carriers), that will be fatal for Microsoft as it will show they do have a bias on meeting the US carriers demands for updated coding and encryption.

The FCC will not order them to pull out of CDMA carriers, but it can order them to get the current coding up to par with the other three major platforms. If Microsoft decides WP devices would be GSM exclusive, they will have far more serious problems to get to their goal of 10% share in the US (which means they will have to at least triple the actual share on T Mobile and AT&T, and also having to explain the FTC why are they being discriminatory against CDMA carriers when there is no carrier exclusive deal similar to what AT&T had with Apple for the iphone until 2010. I wonder what would be the explanation Team Windows Phone and Microsoft would give. It may sound something like this:

"CDMA carriers, the FCC, and Qualcomm are using a standard for code and encryption we consider is prohibitive to meet, although RIM, Google, and Apple have meet and surpassed. We don't have the resources to dedicate to properly code to the requirements of CDMA carriers, so we thought they would make concessions as Verizon did and accept the same coding we use for CDMA carriers in China."

And the FTC will follow with the following:
"We are aware Qualcomm, and nearly all the CDMA carriers including Verizon use 512bit encryption, which is also Qualcomm's current recommended standard. Wouldn't be easier to add Qualcomm certified CDMA coders for Team Windows Phone as you had for the team that handled Windows Mobile? Also, why you would not meet demands of better technical and marketing support that carriers like US Cellular, C Spire, Cricket, MetroPCS, and Sprint (among many others) have demanded since the launch of Windows Phone 7, while providing both for T-Mobile and AT&T? To be honest, you are looking very biased in giving better treatment to GSM carriers, and don't want to deal with what we consider as fair demands by CDMA carriers, which have about two thirds of the total cell phone lines in the market, and that is a MAJOR problem."

Brmiller1976, you are missing the point. Microsoft needs every carrier in the US, including all the regional and prepaid GSM and especially CDMA carriers in the US, even if they may be in borrowed time as you claim they are, which in most cases they are not because they make plenty of money on home/roaming agreements with the major four carriers. Why am I stating this? For the simple reason those regional carriers own most of the rural tower space and spectrum, as well as some major markets.

Let me give you examples:
#1. Premier owns spectrum and tower space in Kansas and Oklahoma. They had home/roaming agreements with Sprint and Verizon. Both expired on February 29th, 2012, and August 15th, 2012 respectively. Premier chose not to renew, which also caused them not to have home coverage in most of the country. That may backfire at them in the long term.

#2. US Cellular, the fifth largest carrier in the US. They have a lot of Towerspace and spectrum in their coverage area, and have roaming agreements with Sprint and Verizon. They have a lot of spectrum in the midwest and parts of the northwest as well.

#3. Cincinnati Bell: they practically own all the tower space on their coverage area, including rural areas in Ohio. AT&T and T Mobile needs them as a major roaming partner in their coverage area.

#4. Open Mobile de Puerto Rico (the other company which decided to take the same decision of no longer sell the Arrive/Pro 7 because Microsoft deemed DOA). Verizon has zero home coverage in Puerto Rico since they transfer all their assets to Claro (which switched that network from CDMA to GSM). Verizon uses them as a roaming partner mostly on the central part of the island, while Verizon pays a lot of money to Sprint to roam on their network on most of the island.

#5. Claro de Puerto Rico. They own what once was Verizon's towerspace. GSM carrier which provides home coverage for AT&T and T Mobile subscribers on the central part of the island, while AT&T and T-Mobile provides roaming coverage to Claro customers with numbers based in Puerto Rico.

There are more examples I can give you why regional carriers are not on borrowed time, but it would make this post too long and repetitive. The five i gave you are examples why Regional (some are Rural) carriers have a trump card on major carriers on the markets they are located.

My intentions are not to bash you for what you have stated, but to educate you and many of the members here why regional carriers, especially all CDMA based carriers should be a major priority to Microsoft in order to have a chance to get to their goal of a 10% share on the smartphone race in the US. If Microsoft focuses only on the two major GSM carriers, they better hope T-Mobile and especially AT&T can get then close to a 30% share on their networks, since they represent about 26-29% of the total cellphone market in the US alone (all GSM carriers have 35-38% of all total cellphone lines in the US, while 60% are on CDMA based carriers, and less than 2% on iDen networks, which have no chance of getting 3G data unless they switch to GSM or use a CDMA based PTT 3G/4G service similar to what Sprint is deploying).

It would be lovely to have a Sprint device, but Sprint has chosen to miss the wave. Most people who want WP have likely left Sprint for one of the others already.

That would be me. Left Sprint after over 12 years because they didn't have any plans for WP8 in the foreseeable future. But since moving it's become more than that. I didn't realize how slow and bad their network was. It was very obvious from the first time I powered my new phone up and took it for a cruise. About the only thing Sprint has worthwhile is the unlimited data plan. But using it on iphone or android wasn't an attractive option for me.

You guys are hopless, clueless and blind on the issue. Ask someone who has breaken down to the sourcecode of WP8, and they will tell you how broken the current CDMA coding used on WP8 is, but that is too hard to explain. I guess is easier to blame a certain carrier because they exposed all the problems Windows Phone has, and because most CDMA carriers chose the same device Sprint did.

Coincidence or conspiracy theory by WpCentral? i say is both because none have gone to the source at Microsoft
To ask WHY they were ONLY two CDMA based WP7 devices for the US market and what is the real issue they have with CDMA coding and encryption. I am waiting for Alan F, Michael Aaron Rowe, or any of the WP supporting writers to ask Team Windows Phone for all the answers to find out why they can't get Sprint, US Cellular, Premier, C Spire, Cricket, Appalachian Wireless, Cricket, Open Mobile de Puerto Rico, nTelos, and the rest of the regional and prepaid CDMA carriers in the US (including all the Sprint and Verizon MVNOs) to carry at least one WP8 at launch, and if the main reasons have to do with the coding and encryption used by them compared to what the carriers (and Qualcomm) require.

Go ahead guys, get to the real reasons, then you can all appologize to me and the rest of the "Sprint/CDMA defenders" as many of you in the GSM world call us.

KingCrimson, you have hit the nail right on the head. We know they have gain ground in places like Italy and China, but on most major markets they are actually falling behind, and the US is a big example.

If Windows Phone hits 10 million US users, it will be a platform that would be silly to ignore. Grabbing a 30% share of iOS in the USA for something like banking would be a tremendously expensive and competitive task, whereas dominating banking on Windows Phone would be easy (if competitors focus entirely on platform market share).

Citibank recently shut down some underperforming branches in the Philadelphia suburbs and retrenched to the city core. I read that each branch they were closing was opened in the 2006/2007 time frame for $4 million -- each. $4 million to open a suburban branch in a town in a metro area that reaches perhaps 150,000 people... yet they won't develop a Windows Phone app that would reach millions of users and cost perhaps $500K in total. Dumb, dumb, dumb. It just means that JP Morgan Chase, USAA and Bank of America get lots of customers, easily.

10 million users will still be very shy of the 10% mark in the smartphone market. There are over 300 million cell phone lines in the US (including lines for business use), and for a 10% smartphone share, Microsoft will need at least 20 million lines, and they currently stand below the 4% mark mostly due to where most of their devices are going (GSM). Have in mind business lines are included on these numbers.

Last month Adduplex has released Windows Phone statistics showing rapid growth of Lumia 920 in US market. Today Adduplex have shown a slide which shows that WP8 has tremendous improved its share to 43%. It is really phenomenal due to the fact that it has been only 2 months since WP8 phones are on the market and when we know that WP7 phones are selling more than 1 year and 3 months. So data shows big quantity selling of new WP8 phones just in two moths.

43% improvement for the Lumia 920, compared to than the amount of Lumia 900 sold on only one carrier as well. If they managed to sell around 80-125 thousand units, there was major improvement but still not significant to make a major dent on the share of Windows Phone in the US market. Have in mind the Lumia 900 has barely sold 600,000 units in the US and took them a year to do so. For a high end device, the sales figures are atrocious when it comes to high end devices sold on the #2 contract Carrier in the US (Verizon holds #1, Sprint Holds #3, T Mobile USA holds #4, US Cellular holds #5)